The Remarkable SaaS Podcast

This podcast interview focuses on the story behind Pollfish – and their approach to reinvent market research for a new era by shortening cycle times to get faster, high-quality feedback from customers. My guest is John Papadakis, Founder and CEO at Pollfish John started his career as an Android developer. He’s passionate about platforms and businesses that scale and has always had a particular focus on the mobile domain. In 2011 he co-founded Pajap, a service which allowed to create native Android applications, that didn’t need update or installation thereby combining the best of native app world and web app world  In 2013 he founded Pollfish, a platform that provides brands a revolutionary way to learn, communicate and interact with existing and prospective customers. That inspired me, and hence I invited John to my podcast. We explore their journey to create a new category and the challenges to grow customer trust by establishing a large enough audience of close to a billion consumers . We also discuss his secrets of growing the Pollfish business – and how simplification and trust in people have been a great asset in that. Here are some of his quotes: Essentially Pollfish started because we had apps, and we want to monetize them. But advertising didn't work for our apps. And we were thinking: ‘There must be a better way to monetize those apps, and that way to be less intrusive since we don't want to spam our users.’ So, we created the Pollfish library first, and we saw that people responded to surveys within the app. In a few days, we had hundreds of thousands of people.  So, the company started from a need to monetize, and from the opportunity that the mobile app ecosystem (in 2013) was a new distribution channel for market research. It's a two-sided marketplace: you need supply and demand. And you've got to have both. So, we started with the supply, focus there for a couple of years, and then we launched Pollfish as it is today to solve the father decision making problem. During this interview, you will learn four things: Why – if you want to boost momentum - it’s key to focus your go-to-market on your core strengths and true values – and avoid anything that’s outside of that scope  How smart packaging can enable you to change perception and with that open complete new market opportunities Why your customers don't want to worry about ‘figuring your messaging out’. They want it simple – so simple they can share it with their boss. Why throwing way an impressive KPI sheet and focus on just 2 numbers gave focus and boosted creativity amongst all staff For more information about the guest from this week: John Papadakis Website Pollfish See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This podcast interview focuses on product innovation that has the power to help us create the critical connections that can transform their world. My guest is Stephen Choi, Co-founder and CEO of Hi Right Now He started his career in investment banking, then quickly started his entrepreneurial journey by co-founding Moxy Media Group in 2009 and Lets Branch in 2017. A surprising detail about Stephen is that he’s never lived anywhere for longer than 3 years. This nomadic experience taught him how to quickly make friends wherever I went. At the same time, floating around from place to place meant he struggled with keeping his friendships.  This let him to co-found Vuybe in 2019 and Hi Right Now in 2020. Hi Right Now is on a mission to empower humanity to form deep meaningful connections. When COVID swept the world, we entered a new era of work – an era where remote work has become ubiquitous. And with the majority of the workforce working remotely, people are feeling lonely, disconnected, and having a hard time communicaing freely. That’s what Hi Right Now about to change. And this inspired me, and hence I invited Stephen to my podcast. We explore one of the new challenges that have become more apparent during the pandemic: Building meaningful connections. We discuss why this is so important for human beings and why current technology options available aren’t a real help. We dig into how, by introducing a different approach, we can not only take the problem away, but also deliver a range of unexpected benefits for both individuals as the organization they work for. Here are some of his quotes: I just experienced this rapid-fire transitionary period: Graduating from this program, than trying to pursue this entrepreneurial venture and then trying to fundraise and everything.  So, I need a lot of connections, I need a lot of help and I'm just trying to navigate all these things. So, how do I meet these people that I want to meet. Surely there are entrepreneurs and start-up founders that have walked the same type of journey that have gone down the similar a similar path. There was a huge problem: People belong into multiple online and offline communities, yet it’s still incredibly difficult for you to meet people in a fun and consistent way. Number two: with the progression of the pandemic, social distancing has made it incredibly difficult for you to meet new people. And then the last thing is that networking is just stressful and awkward and solace sometimes During this interview, you will learn four things: How value can be unlocked by ignoring current connections and relations, breaking down barriers, and introducing serendipity That you can create virality around your software by making people the stars inside your product Why the most remarkable ideas for innovation are often right in front of you – just be willing to see that what’s normal to you isn’t necessarily normal for others. That measuring your success by the level of impact you make on the world isn’t about numbers – but about stories. Stories that spread. For more information about the guest from this week: Stephen Choi Website Hi Right Now See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This podcast interview focuses on product innovation that has the power to let every employee have its fair share in the capital in our society. My guest is Quintus Willemse, Co-founder, and CEO of The Share Council Quintus is on a mission. Every day he is solving societal problems with technology and entrepreneurship. This mission started in 2014 as a long journey to change the world with the use of technology. To change how people work together and the working conditions, change how life and work are perceived, improve education and knowledge spread, improve the equal division of capital, and prepare the world for the next generation of technology and innovation. This is inspired me, and hence I invited Quintus to my podcast. We explore what's wrong in society when it comes to the capital divide. We talk about the biggest bureaucratical hurdles and how we can leverage technology to overcome that. We talk about the importance of big vision thinking when drawing the right people in – people who share the belief – and help spark the momentum. Lastly, we discuss some of his big entrepreneurial lessons learned. Here are some of his quotes: One of the things I stumbled upon along the way was the enormous divide in the capital in our society. Just the example of Europe, 64% of the capital in Europe is in the hands of 10% of the population. The reason that the divide is there is that the return on capital is higher than economic growth. So my salary will never keep up with the speed at which there's a return on capital. If you can leverage that, if you can get more people the leverage of capital, one of the forms is having savings account fine. Another form is having a share. About five years ago, I ran into that and wanted to make everybody co-owner. And I figured out it's pretty difficult in the Netherlands to make someone co-owner of your business. I had a company of about five employees, and to make them co-owner, the first bill I was looking at was between eight and 10,000 euros. This is more or less a smack in the face for any entrepreneur, any good willing entrepreneur who wants to give employees this opportunity. During this interview, you will learn four things: That some of the most remarkable software businesses start because they were bold enough to solve the problem that was in the way of their own success How to spark momentum by having a sensitive eye for the most critical (and often illogical) roadblocks to be removed Having a strong vision and believing in what you do will act as the magnet to get the right people to join you on that journey. That as an entrepreneur, you better be prepared you will make all the big mistakes at the same time – And surround yourself with the right people to protect you. For more information about the guest from this week: Quintus Willemse The Share Council Website See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This podcast interview focuses on the essence of the book ‘The Wicked Company’ and my guest is Markus Kirsch, FRSA, Author & Founder The Wicked Company. Marcus is a .com veteran with nearly two decades of award-winning, international and integrated design and technology project experience. A Royal College of Art alumni and ex-MIT Media Lab Europe researcher, Marcus Kirsch has worked as a transformation, service design, and innovation specialist. With project experience for companies like British Telecom, GlaxoSmithKline, Kraft, McDonald's, Nationwide, Nissan, Science Museum, P&G, Telekom Italia, and many others, he believes that we need a new narrative, mindset, and way of working to align ourselves with what society needs today.  As he states: We live in an era of wicked problems. Problems that continue to evolve and morph beyond your solutions even as you form them. The ways that always worked to solve problems, doesn’t work anymore.  The days of tame problems—mass production, building bridges, solving for x —are behind us, but we’re still designing companies to solve those tame problems. As a consequence, 70% of digital transformations are failing (McKinsey). Marcus Kirsch is on a mission to change all that.  This inspired me, and hence I invited Marcus to my podcast. We explore how the nature of problems are changing from tame problems into wicked problems, and what this means to the mindsets, organizations and cultures we need to develop to succeed. We also address how our measures should change and how qualitative measures become essential in the process. Last but not least we talk about what Tech-Entrepreneurs need to do differently to drive the transformation and unlock new margin-boosting sources of value. Here are some of his quotes: The big thing to realize is that we're living in an era of problem evolution, not a technology revolution.  We have organizations who have spent a lot of time creating solutions, without having reviewed what the actual problem is.  We know that some problems have changed, because technology has entered our life. Technology has to some extent changed our behavior the way we are connected around the globe. And that has led to a type or characteristics of problems to grow and evolve around us, without organizations or people being able to identify those characteristics. And because we haven't identified it, I think that's why we're failing a lot. During this interview, you will learn four things: Why it’s key to fall in love with the problem, not the product  Why the better way to look at finding solutions it in aiming for effectiveness (i.e impact) rather than efficiency That we have to develop an idea about sustainable failure – to learn faster and grow your innovation muscle better, quicker and more effective Why it is key to embrace emotion as a skill to truly understand what the problem really looks like. For more information about the guest from this week: Markus Kirsch The Wicked Company See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This podcast interview focuses on product innovation that has the power to shape working environments that increase our productivity and wellness. My guest is Tim Panagos, Co-founder and Chief Technology Officer at Microshare Tim is a technology executive with 20 years of experience in Enterprise Software. He’s a change agent and a vision setter who’s thrilled by building and sees the wisdom in maintaining. He believes that technology is a weapon for strategic competitive advantage, and is most productive when he can team with a business partner who shares his big ideas He was most recently Chief Architect of Accenture’s global Business Process Management (BPM) practice leading architecture innovation. Prior to that, Tim was CTO at Knowledge Rules, a global consulting start-up and held multiple engineering leadership roles at Pegasystems (PEGA). He holds a Masters in the Management of Technology from MIT and studied Computer Science at UNH. In 2013 he co-founded Microshare™, where today he’s in charge of strategic product vision and the implementation of it. Microshare is all about squeezing more value from more data. The focus has been on harnessing and sharing previously hidden insights on client operations. This unveils vast cost-savings opportunities and delivers new metrics on occupant wellness, building performance and sustainability – and enables the businesses to deliver novel business models that will create new industries and disrupt existing. That inspired me, and hence I invited Tim to my Podcast. We explore how businesses are challenged to make the right and best decisions how to deploy the space they own or occupy, and how COVID has made that challenge worse. We address what opportunity we have in taking employee wellness and productivity to the next level when we bring in meaningful and live data from sensors into the picture. Beyond that we talk about what it takes to build a software business that create solutions that not only has an edge, but also keeps it. Here are some of his quotes: When I was leaving Accenture what I was being getting to see were that there were patterns in how these very large projects, 50 million hundred million dollar a year projects that were being executed, were combining technologies that I felt were ripe to be harvested and democratized. And so being a systems thinker, I began to kind of visualize how we could take and boil these will large projects down and create building blocks that would allow more people to take advantage of them. People who didn't have the budget or the risk profile necessary to launch a $50 million Accenture project to apply these things. How would we kind of redesign and reconceived these technologies to make it more broadly applicable? During this interview, you will learn four things: How to create solutions to aid decision making in areas where there’s a lot of human bias, emotional tension or invisible behaviour. How removing friction in the adoption and decision/buying process of enterprise solutions helps drive momentum How data-privacy can become your key differentiator if you think about it differently How you can grow faster and bigger by focusing with dedication on a smaller, less educated, and narrower defined market For more information about the guest from this week: Tim Panagos Website Microshare See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This podcast interview focuses on what secrets investors are looking for in B2B SaaS companies. My guest is Akeel Jabber, Investment Director and GP at HoriZen Capital Akeel is an expert in growth marketing strategy and business operations. He’s also an engineer who was previously a partner and operations director at Wired investors, a micro private equity firm focused on digital asset acquisitions and has been involved in over 15 company acquisitions.  Today he’s a general partner and Investment Director at HoriZen Capital, an investment firm that invests and acquires SaaS companies over $500k in ARR. He’s also the host of the SaaS District podcast where he interviews entrepreneurs and investors on topics such as leadership, B2B sales, growth marketing, innovation, scaling, funding and M&A.  The combination intrigued me, and hence I invited Akeel to my podcast. We explore what’s essential to make the ‘marriage’ between a start-up and investor magic. What do investors look for, what do they value and care about and what turns them off. Besides that we discuss (through the eyes of an investor) what it takes to build a remarkable software business. Here are some of his quotes: When you're building a company, try to think outside the box, and be so good they can't ignore you. There's kind of two kind of trends that I found with how people stumble upon starting to their company Number one, you have the people who just know it from the beginning: I'm an entrepreneur. I have to build something.And then once I build the next one, I go to the next one, and it's just in my DNA. And then there's the other side, that people don't think about it. They're stuck into a problem that they never even thought to monetize or build as a solution. So, they just build a solution, because they're creators The moral of the story is like, it doesn't matter. You don't have to be a born entrepreneur think that it's built into you, you just have to be able to look around for a problem to solve.  If you feel you can solve it, take that courage, take that step, I think you have nothing to lose, you'd be surprised with yourself. During this interview, you will learn four things: That it doesn’t matter how you start and build your SaaS business. The power is in starting. Ideas are cheap. The value is in bringing it alive Why you should avoid fitting into the norm – build your business the way you want to build it.  That your ability to have customers stick around for the long-term is more important than growing fast.  That we tend to be proud in saying we’re doing ABCDEFG – but focus is king. It’s more important to showcase how you do 1 thing extremely well. For more information about the guest from this week: Akeel Jabber Website HoriZen Capital SaaS District Podcast See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This podcast interview focuses on product innovation that has the power to change the way that marketers create. My guest is R.J. Talyor, CEO and Founder of Pattern89 R.J. has been a B2B software entrepreneur for well over 15 years. He fulfilled various roles ranging from strategist, director Product Marketing and VP of Mobile Products at ExactTarget, became VP of Messaging Products at Salesforce, and served as the VP of Product Management at Geofeedia. He’s recognized as one of the Indianapolis business Journal’s 40 Under 40. In 2016 he founded Pattern89. With this company he’s on a mission is to inspire creativity – and to build something that will change marketing forever.  Their strong believe is that AI will make brands, agencies, and marketers more creative, and more human in an increasingly automated world. This inspired me, and hence I invited R.J. to my podcast. We explore what’s broken in marketing – especially on the creative side. We discuss how marketing is becoming more and more metrics driven, while we still make creative decisions based on gut-feel (often by the highest paid person in the room). We also dig into what it takes to build a remarkable software business – creating software that’s extremely sticky – software that people want to use. Here are some of his quotes: Marketers spend a ton of time on audience development, on reach, on frequency. Everyone talks about journeys, but they don't talk about creative. What I saw was that there's a better way to create what images or videos or copy that you see, and machine learning provides marketers with tools to allow them to do that, like never before. So, the big problem is how do we get more efficient at the creative process, without asking marketers to act more like machines? What they want to do is understand if their idea is going to work or not. And so marketers are kind of trained themselves into machines to try to compute that when we should say: “Hey, no, no human marketer, go create something else. You're the creator, you're the idea person, you're the idea. Machine machines can come up with ideas, let the machines simulator validate what's gonna work, and you human, you do what humans can do best.” During this interview, you will learn four things: That very often stickiness of your applications increase not by building a better User Interface to perform a task, but by making it magically happen How you can help your customers make a difference is by avoiding the ‘highest paid person in the room’ to feel inclined to make a decision Why your future success and momentum can be hidden in killing your darlings i.e., get rid of those things you’re just hooked to. How Data-Coop across your customers can shift from a nice to have into your primary selling point For more information about the guest from this week: R.J. Talyor Website Pattern89 See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This podcast interview focuses on product innovation that has the power to engage your support team and empower them to do their best work. My guest is Justin Winter, Co-founder and CEO of Boostopia. He has been an advisor to over a dozen companies and acted in a consulting capacity with over 150+ consumer brands and technology companies across areas of growth, retention, product, and operations.  Justin studied for his Bachelor of Science degree in Marketing from Liberty University in Lynchburg, VA.  In 2010 he co-founded Diamond Candles, the fastest growing and largest online  home fragrance brand in the world. He lead the company as the CEO for 5 years. In that process he became frustrated with the solutions available to him to deliver customer support that his customers loved. So he decided to set out to assemble a team to lead to build what he wish he would have had during his tenure there.  This became the spark that started Boostopia of which Justin is the the Co-founder and CEO. Boostopia is a technology company that helps B2C companies decrease the number of tickets they get, discover ways to efficiently manage support issues, and transform support into a new revenue generating channel. This inspired me, and hence I invited Justin to my podcast. We explore why bad customer support still exists and why the current approach of focusing on the support agent is not enough to solve it. We also discuss the opportunities to turn the support department from a cost-centre into a profit-centre, and the opportunity to increase the wage of support team members by a mere 50% as a consequence of that. Here are some of his quotes: We fundamentally believe that the way to create better customer experiences isn't by getting the latest and greatest fancy ticketing system. It's really about engaging your support team that you have and empowering them to do their best work. Why does customer support, from our perspective as a consumer, why is it so horrible? We all hate talking to customer support. We have lots of frustrating experiences. So, we fundamentally believe that the reason why bad customer support still exists. It's not because companies don't know that that's happening. It's because they don't have an underlying attribution model for understanding how those bad experiences lead to them making less money. During this interview, you will learn four things: How to spark momentum by overwhelming your users with opportunity i.e. give them a clear picture of the value they are creating with your product How to find balance in your investment between ‘selling what you got’ versus making ‘the next big thing.’  Why companies that bet on product-led growth are proportionally better rewarded than those that are sales led. Why you’d drive more value for your customers by instead of helping them be more efficient, help them eliminate the underlying problem all together. For more information about the guest from this week: Justin Winter Website Boostopia See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This podcast interview focuses on product innovation that has the power to help marketers to build the meaningful relationships with the right companies. My guest is Riaz Kanani, Founder and CEO of Radiate B2B. Riaz is a mix of marketer, technologist and entrepreneur who worked with cutting edge technologies throughout his career, whether it be the nascent flash/java video space in the early 2000s to combining email, mobile and social media marketing technologies in 2008. Throughout it all, he’s used data as the backbone behind these technologies to better understand how people behave and use these new approaches. In that journey he founded 6 companies and worked for IBM, Lyris, Alchemy Worx and Profusion. He’s also a mentor at Techstars. Today he’s helping to build a better way to do B2B Marketing that increases both average contract values and the speed of closing contracts. And this resonated with me, and hence I invited Riaz to my podcast. We explore what’s broken in marketing automation and why the answer is in choosing a different approach, not in more tools. We also discuss what it takes to succeed in B2B software, and what decisions and mindsets are fundamental to stand out. Here are some of his quotes: It became really clear when talking to those companies that we've become in the b2b or business marketing space, very reliant on content and events to drive lead acquisition, nurturing, email marketing obviously as well. Basically, we were all reliant on exactly the same things, and b2b marketing would become homogenous. And the only way to stand out was really to be doing better creative. And I think that's a marketer’s worst nightmare. I felt that there had to be a better way. The more I looked at it, the more I realized that if you were building a marketing automation company today, you wouldn't build a platform that looked anything like the marketing automation platforms that exist today. During this interview, you will learn four things: That there’s no nice handbook that tells you exactly what’s going to happen with your software business: so, to succeed it’s your duty to hire people that can think on their feet Why your marketing will become exponentially better if you start thinking about the world as being a list of companies that you build relationships with How defensible differentiation can be created by blending a strong product with an irresistible business model. That your decision how to position yourselves in a space can create a significant problem around your messaging For more information about the guest from this week: Riaz Kanani Website Radiate B2B See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This podcast interview focuses on product innovation that has the power to radically evolve the way people search and transact property. My guest is Bobby Bryant, Founder and CEO of Doss. Bobby has been in real estate for 20 years. He began his journey in the mortgage business. In 2008, he took one year off to relentlessly study and understand the collective real estate industry, what happened, and what's to come. That sparked the idea to found DOSS.  DOSS is on a mission to develop the best technology to make homeownership in America more affordable. This inspired me, and hence I invited Bobby to be a guest on my podcast. We explore what’s broken in the Real Estate industry when it comes to finding and buying properties. We dig into the opportunity to create a win-win approach i.e. a world where nobody has to lose, and how technology and data has a fundamental roll in realizing this. Finally we discuss what it takes to build a software business people would miss if it was gone.  Here are some of his quotes: Every industry in the country has become more automated and economical. If you think about the promise of technology it was to do two things. The promise of technology was to save us time and money. So, in real estate, when you think of all of the technological advancements of today, yet the cost of transact real estate hadn't changed. The biggest issue for a lot of people is the barrier of entry of costs to get into a home. Or a seller who has a million-dollar house and to give away $60,000 of their equity. How can we be in 2020 charging the same fee that we charged in the early 1900s? The real estate industry struggles with a win-win. Why does somebody have to lose in this equation? During this interview, you will learn four things: How a position of advantage can be created if we think about win-win i.e. provide unique value to both parties at the table – not just one. Why instead of talking like a rocket scientist you should soften your message and talk like a truck driver  Why the companies of the future are going to be the companies that figure out how to make people feel good, and feel good about themselves  Why you have to be prepared to pay attention for continuous evolution.  For more information about the guest from this week: Bobby Bryan Website Doss See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices